Thinking about the Smart Grid, IoT, M2M, cybersecurity, mobility, the connected home, and lots and lots of wireless.

Sunday, December 21, 2008

How to Piss Off Your Customers

Delete their profiles and make them re-register "to better serve" them.

My ass.

24 Hour Fitness, you have GOT to be kidding me. I know people that have been tracking their weight and blood pressure for years on your site. And this, THIS is what you deliver to your paying customers in the name of progress?

(As an aside, Gentle Reader, I apologize if you're shocked that I'm writing about a gym. I may not look like it, but I actually do go to the gym. Seriously. Suspend disbelief.)

You appreciate my patience? You give me too much credit. 24 Hour Fitness, c'mon. I understand that you're trying to roll out a new set of capabilities on the website, but I gotta tell ya, at this point I have no belief whatsoever that you can roll out anything that I'll be able to use with confidence--or whose data won't be orphaned again at some point in the future.

This should be Enterprise Architecture 101 meets Customer Relationship Management 101. Migrate the back-end stuff to the new architecture, making customers happier with new functionality integrated with existing data. You already have a data store of people's information mapped to their login ID. Carry it forward to the new system. Maybe the new system is based on a different, more scalable architecture. Maybe the new system can't import the (hopefully encrypted/hashed) passwords. But, is it really that tough to move the existing data store into the new database model? Databases rarely get simpler, so I doubt that you've gotten rid of the basics like login name, password, and member number. Well, since you need them in the new system, why not carry 'em over from the old system? I'll need to create a new password, you say? That's fine--let me click a button to generate a one-time password reset link, sent to my e-mail address on file. Or, let me punch in the membership number on my card to validate my identity, allowing me to create a new password in the new database. But, to just totally whack everybody's account and user data is inexcusable.

Instead of EA 101 meets CRM 101 to deliver a seamlessly elegant solution via an elegantly seamless migration, you've ended up with a train wreck. I guess that's what happens when a company without a CIO tries to roll out a project like this. But, c'mon--one of the CXOs listed on this page had to sign off on this thing. Whether you're the big dog, the marketing guy, or the finance guy, somebody had to know about the fact you were orphaning your user data.

And if you didn't, y'all need to start asking some hard questions of the rest of your team. Pronto.

heyCoop (hā-kōōp')

interjection: used when greeting a person (typically male) whose last name is Coop or Cooper

Send me an e-mail at...

blog (at) heyCoop (dot) com

Who is Coop?

After 20+ years in high tech, in positions ranging from systems engineering to sales to marketing to business development, I decided in 2007 it was time to put my accumulated knowledge to use for more than one organization at a time, while also evolving my focus from pure networking to the emerging Internet of Energy--the Enernet. From my time at places such as Microsoft/WebTV, Cranite, and Tzero, I've developed a unique perspective on Smart Grid, wireless, mobile, and the digital home, some of which I'll be sharing with you here.

I'm active in a number of professional organizations, including serving on the SGIP Board of Directors, IEEE, the Bluetooth SIG, UPnP Forum, the FBI’s InfraGard, and AFCEA.

Learn more at www.linkedin.com/in/mikecoop

Why Coop?

Quite a few folks have asked what prompted me to launch my own consultancy. While you can imagine that answers exist on about a million different levels, the net-net is that I'm a consumer electronics guy, a digital home guy, a service provider guy, a retail guy, a military security guy, and for the last four years, a Smart Grid guy. Precious few "jobs" allow a person to keep one foot in the CE world and the other in the DOD and utility worlds. One moves at the speed of light; the others move much more deliberately, but with decidedly more in-depth strategic analysis before stepping off the curb. More often than not, utility- and military-focused solutions simply can't fail--a desire in the CE space, but definitely not a design characteristic.

Since I wasn't looking for my next "job", I chose instead to step off my own figurative curb and make a career out of what I love most--working with customers and partners to define markets and solutions, enabling delivery of world-class capabilities to end users. Consulting is the best method for me to do so. Interestingly, some of the capabilities needed by a consumer electronics user, by a Smart Grid system of systems, and by a warfighter are one and the same, so the disconnect is often less than you might think...